The present invention relates generally to the field of sports headgear and, in particular, to a new and useful mechanism for quickly attaching and removing the faceguard of a helmet with a quick connection that is based on the use of a partial turn fastener.
People engaged in contact sports or other potentially dangerous activities, are occasionally injured. Football helmets and other types of helmets are meant to reduce such injures, especially to the head and face. For this reason they often include a face opening covered by a protective faceguard that is secured to the helmet. When a player or dangerous activity participant is injured, a medical professional must assess and sometimes also treat the injury at the very place the injury occurred. When trainers and doctors are examining a player who has been injured, they often will need to ask the injured person questions. They also may need to look into the player's eyes and generally examine the persons head and face. Additionally, sometimes the injured person will need to drink water or in extreme cases will need oxygen to be administered. Therefore, a trainer or physician's view of and access to the injured persons face must be unobstructed. Accordingly in such situations, the person's faceguard must be removed. Since the injury may involve the neck, it is also important that the faceguard be removed with minimal movement to the player's head and neck.
It is known to use plastic loopstraps that engage around the side and top elongated wire segments of a faceguard, and that are fastened to a football helmet shell by threaded T-nuts and screw-type fasteners to hold the faceguard to the helmet. Understanding the need for rapid removal of the faceguard in case an athlete wearing the helmet is injured, it is also known to simply cut the loopstraps using, for example, wire cutters, to quickly remove the faceguard with as little movement of the athlete's head as possible. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,633,531 assigned to the owner of the subject application, that teaches the use of such plastic loopstraps and threaded fasteners. Also see U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,293,649 and 5,555,567 to Corpus and U.S. Pat. No. 5,479,658 to Harris for other examples of the use of loopstraps to connect a faceguard to a helmet shell.
Published U.S. Patent Application US 2007/0245468 to Butler discloses a protective helmet with an internal suspension system including a support of webbing structure configured to fit to the curved shape of a wearer's head. Size-adjustment ends of the support extend out through apertures in back of the helmet shell so that the wearer can assess the ends to make size adjustments. To avoid snagging, the apertures and support ends are covered by a cover, and the cover can be attached to the helmet shell by quarter-turn or half-turn screw fasteners so the person wearing the helmet or an assistant can quickly remove and replace the cover. See paragraph [0040] of Butler. Butler, while also suggesting the use of loopstraps to connect a faceguard to a helmet in FIG. 1 of the reference, for example, does not suggested the usefulness of quick connectors for also connecting the loopstraps to the helmet, or any reason for doing this.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,292,953 to Beaitz discloses quarter-turn fasteners to hold an inner fitted helmet inside an outer helmet shell. No details about the quarter-turn fastener are taught, however.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,718,127 to Rittmann et al. discloses a transparent face shield or visor that can be tilted up and held in an open detent position with respect to the shell of a motorcycle helmet by rotary hinges that each include a washer spring loaded shank with a cam member that can be turned by rotation of the shank and held by the biasing force of the spring in the open position.
See the following U.S. patents and published patent application for other examples of quarter-turn fasteners used to attach parts to a helmet, but never with the structure or purpose of attaching the elongated wire segments of a faceguard to a helmet shell, nor the realization that rapid removal of the faceguard is a goal: U.S. Pat. No. 3,086,213 to Crozat et al. at col. 2, lines 38-44; U.S. Pat. No. 4,887,320 to Long et al. at col. 5, lines 20-31; U.S. Pat. No. 6,301,720 to Bataille et al. at col. 3 and 4, lines 60-65; U.S. Pat. No. 6,892,393 to Provost et al. at col. 4, lines 58-61; and Published Patent Application US 2006/0037125 to McDowell at paragraphs [0028] and [0033].
There remains a need for new and useful ways to attach and remove the faceguard of a player's or participant's protective helmet, with little or no movement of the persons head and neck.